Stars and crew members dined on local salmon at the on-location catering truck and packed Port Townsend restaurants such as the Lido and the Water Street Deli. Paramount paid for a local family to stay at the Manresa Castle (one of Port Townsend's many Victorian homes converted to elegant inns) for a week in addition to paying them several thousand dollars so that crews could use their house to film a scene in which Zach (Gere) has dinner with Paula (Winger) and her family. Nearly all the movie was shot in Port Townsend, with only a few scenes filmed on Whidbey Island and at other Western Washington locations.įor two months, local carpenters kept busy building and removing sets. Hill Building downtown, and elsewhere throughout the city. Once filming began, residents watched, and some participated as extras, while scenes were filmed on the parade ground and in historic buildings at Fort Worden State Park, in the Town Tavern on the ground floor of the 1889 N. Her husband, Lowell Bogart, who ended up getting a small part in the film, reassured her by predicting - correctly - that the movie would be a hit. Barbara Bogart, a Chamber of Commerce official who helped Paramount arrange the filming, recalled later that after reading the script she worried that "we were going to look like a backwoods hick mill town" (Worthley). The film takes place in "Port Rainier," a run-down mill town whose young women enter affairs with Navy officer candidates because marrying one is their best hope of escaping a dead-end life.
Some Port Townsend residents also had misgivings about the story. And the characters were not characteristic of Navy men" ( City of Dreams, 113). "To be brutally honest, I didn't think it was much of a story, rather trashy, a lot of violence, sex and filthy language in it. Navy officials did not approve of how the Navy was portrayed in the script. Navy refused to let Paramount use the actual Navy Aviation Officer Candidate School at Pensacola, Florida. Port Townsend's pride in being chosen for the movie was slightly tempered when the local paper revealed that it was selected only after the U.S.
Four hundred residents, 8 percent of the total Port Townsend population, responded to a casting call for extras. Three local lodgings got advance rent payments to spruce up so they could house the 100-person Hollywood contingent in proper style. The company promised to spend at least $1 million (the cast and crew, receiving ample per diem expense accounts, would spend twice that) and money began flowing immediately. Paramount's announcement that it would film a major feature in Port Townsend triggered a burst of excitement and activity. The filming pumps some three million dollars into the local economy, results in a hit film for Paramount, and boosts the careers of its three stars. Movie scenes are shot at Fort Worden State Park, the Tides Inn, the Town Tavern, the Port Townsend Paper Mill, and other locations around the historic city on the northeast tip of the Olympic Peninsula. For two months, Hollywood stars rub shoulders with Port Townsend residents on the streets, in local restaurants, and at after-hours parties. Directed by Taylor Hackford, the romantic drama stars Richard Gere as a would-be Navy pilot attending Officer Candidate School, Debra Winger as the local factory worker who becomes his girlfriend, and Louis Gossett Jr. In late April 1981, a cast and crew of more than 100 arrive in Port Townsend to begin filming the Paramount Pictures feature An Officer and a Gentleman.